I believe in video cameras

Growing up my life was always being captured through photographs and videos. I never minded having my picture taken as a child but I always hated the fact that my mom, no matter where we went, would always have the video camera attached to her hand. And since my mom went to every event I was ever in so did the video camera. My sister and I would beg my mom to not bring the video camera because we felt that it was a waste of our time to be taped for such short amounts of time and by the end of my senior year in high school it had become a joke among our friends to try to leave before the video camera came out and my mom was taping every move we made to get ready. Although no matter how fast we got ready my mom always had a way to get the video camera out and on before we left the house. Not only did she video tape my years in middle school and high school but we would watch home videos of times I couldn’t even remember. Times when I was just a baby that she would say she never wanted to forget and that a video was the only way to know exactly how it happened. When I’d throw a fit about having to wait for her to video tape my friends before we went to our first dance, or day at school, prom, all of my friends just hanging out around the house, or even the day we all left for college she would ignore me and tell me that I would thank her when I was older for saving these moments in my life because I wouldn’t be able to remember every detail of the moments if I remembered the moments at all and that although I hated it then they would be something I could look back at because every moment of those events couldn’t be forgotten. I believe in memories. I believe in capturing every detail of the moments I will one day want to look back on. I believe in details of memories such as what people say and how they say it, sounds, and the events that took place which photographs cannot capture. I believe in video cameras to capture every detail in the moment. My mom’s father died when she was only 18 and although she has many photographs of him she doesn’t remember the details of her father. She always will tell her brothers that they sound like their dad in the way that they say something and although she remembers the way her dad would say things and the sorts of things he would say she never can remember the sound of his voice something she says she always misses. For this reason I have learned to believe in capturing moments through the use of a video camera. Memories are something that almost every person cherishes because they are around long after something is gone. People always say to cherish every moment and to make memories that last a lifetime. Although memories are made every day they can be forgotten about or pieces of those memories changed. I feel that memories should last a lifetime and for this reason I believe in the lasting memories made through video cameras.

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Growing up in the former Yugoslavia, lawyer Djenita Pasic enjoyed the peace of her religiously diverse country. But after the fall of communism and the outbreak of the Bosnian War, Pasic was forced to reevaluate her ideas about religion and tolerance. Click here to read her essay.